


Close Quarters

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Psychological Torture, Spy gets tortured, Spy saves himself, Torture, just a lot of torture basically, no easy retirement
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-02
Updated: 2013-11-20
Packaged: 2017-12-31 06:21:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1028280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one saving mercy was, Spy was always comfortable with small spaces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Waking Up

When the Spy woke, it was with a pounding headache, and a half-remembered warning. 

When he opens his eyes, some time later, it's a confirmation of what he'd known, mostly. He's strapped down, the room is dimly lit, and he is not alone. Even the space is not a surprise, though it is nothing like any of the places he has been tortured before. It's a small bunker, with a low ceiling. Cramped, he supposed, but a part of him, a small animal part, preferred it that way. If he could get free from his restraints, well, he was always good with close-quarters combat. Perhaps his captor had meant to throw him, but he was far from claustrophobic. A wall or tight corner at his back made him feel safe. 

The restraints would be the real problem... They'd been done while he was unconscious, no room to expand himself to make later escape easier... 

The man in the shadows moves, only barely. The Spy can see the inclining of a head in his direction and nothing else. 

"You used to run with a man, Ducat. He was William Ducat, last I heard." Says the voice from the shadows. 

There is nothing intimidating about it. Too high and too nasal for that, not enough of either quality to be comical. It was a voice, the Spy realizes, that he could have had a polite conversation with in a shop or a cafe, and never given a second thought to. It was not the voice of the kind of man who did the kind of things he could see coming his way.

"Then you have heard more recently than I. I've been engaged three years with Builder's League United, and have no contact with any of the men I may have pulled odd jobs with in the past. So sorry to disappoint."

"On the contrary." He can hear the smile. "I am far from disappointed. If half of what I've heard about your reputation is true? It will be a pleasure to break you."

He steps from the shadows, and the Spy sees a very ordinary looking man, in a nice grey suit. He has a genial smile, on a mobile mouth, that seems too cheery, too friendly, under the circumstances. It does not reach his eyes, those stay colder than any the Spy has seen. 

"For what? Until today, I assumed Ducat was a dead man. We didn't part under ideal circumstances." The Spy sneers. "For that matter, if I knew where he was... I'd give him to you. It's been years since I have known his habits, and he has no love for me."

"My sources claim otherwise. Heard he contacted you." The man nods. His eyes glitter, hard and icy. His smile is polite, until suddenly it flashes sharp. "You'll forgive me if I believe them over you. And Ducat may have no 'love' for you, but my sources claim there's a man who does. I took that into consideration, in finding a suitable place."

"I don't know what you're talk--"

"Coyness doesn't suit you. He is a Sniper-- a former enemy of yours! So. No catwalks above me. Nothing above me. No wide open windows. We are underground, in fact, and the only way to get in here, is by entering through a long, cramped hallway, filled with alarms, and to take a long, steep, narrow staircase. I'd have put a round of bullets into him before he ever reached the bottom. So. Rescue will not be coming. I do hope you are not claustrophobic."

He is absurdly grateful that the Sniper is finishing up some business in Australia, that it could be some time yet before he even finds out. 

"Not really." He attempts a shrug, nonchalant, and watches something almost flare up in the cold eyes of his otherwise unremarkable colleague. It is gone before he can read it, and he watches the man's back as a tray of instruments is inspected. 

It would, the Spy decides, happen right as he retired.


	2. Chapter 1: Story Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spy is a captive audience.

"Do you think he'll come for you?" The man asks, voice mild, polite, as his hands hover over things the Spy is glad enough not to be able to see yet, things the Spy wishes he could see just so he'd be warned for them. "This Sniper friend of yours?"

"I doubt it." 

"Hm. Just as well, then, for me. I'd hate to face a vengeful lover." He moves to the Spy's side with a wide grin and something at last in the ice of his eyes. Nothing that the Spy can read, but it's the first indication he's had that they were human. "There is nothing worse than a trained killer on the warpath. The fury of an aggrieved parent or lover, and the skills to back it up... I make it a special point to be sure about things, when I can. I knew a man, of our profession..." Here, he chuckles. "Tortured this girl, oh, it was awful, but he didn't know her mother was a trained sniper. He didn't get the mercy of a neat headshot, of course. He was absolutely debilitated. One through his calf, one through his hand, one just grazing his neck, and then she caught up to him. Do you know what she had in her purse? Knitting needles and a grapefruit spoon! Do you think she just grabbed what was at hand, or do you think those were her favorites? Well, I suppose it doesn't matter."

"I don't have what you want. But of course you wouldn't believe me." The Spy sighs. "That established, is the chatty tone necessary?"

"I'm a chatty man." His captor shrugs, but his eyes are cold and blank again. "I like to establish a rapport. Sometimes that's all it takes, you know... a little talk, and everyone gets what they want. I get my answers, you get to leave with all your eyes and fingers. A happy ending."

"If I knew where Ducat was, I'd have killed him myself, the man betrayed me."

"Oh, I'm sure you'll stick to that story a while." Another smile, warm on the lips and cold in the eyes. "But so far, Mister...? No? So far, then, Monsieur, you don't know me."

"And I am sure this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." He sneers, and the man laughs. 

"It's the beginning of something. What did Ducat want, when he contacted you at the start of the month? Who delivered the message to you? These are the things I need to know. And once we're better acquainted, I think you'll want to tell me."

"Acquainted." The Spy snorts. "All right. What's your favorite color?"

"I'm fond of purple." The man reaches out and smooths the lapel of the Spy's suit, touches his shoulder. "Well, you'd know about that. You mix red and blue. You're just lucky I wasn't hired by either of those little concerns, they wouldn't be satisfied with answers. I will be."

"You would really let me walk out of here alive if you got what you want? Oh, please, pull the other one! That's a risk you won't take, a man who arranges an underground bunker because he is afraid of snipers!"

"Afraid?" His eyebrows arch, lips curve into an amused smile that still fails to touch his eyes. "Oh, dear, no. I don't have to be afraid. I'm prepared. And... I have curious beliefs about professional courtesy, I suppose. I mean, you're not really my enemy! And if you came after me, I am sure I could settle you then. But I like to give my colleagues the chance not to. It doesn't always work out that way, of course... You wouldn't believe how many assassins I've had to kill, who might have lived if they'd let me be. I've heard some men won't look for me, not even for ready money, depending on which stories they've heard."

The Spy does not take this boast for the truth, just as he doesn't take the promise of surviving his cooperation for the truth. He doesn't believe his captor is fond of purple, either, but then, that is a danger of the profession, and he supposes it's the reason why the man can't believe he was never contacted. 

He'd known Ducat under several names-- William was never one of them, but then, Ducat had never pretended to be English, in the time they had known each other. It was years back, and after the betrayal, they hadn't spoken. And after his own escape, the Spy had not assumed that Ducat had made it out alive, when throwing his partner to the wolves had failed as a gambit. Well, he could withstand a little torture if he had to, and had done in the past, but escape was still his top priority. This man was never going to let him walk out alive. 

"You and I, we're strangers." The man continues. "I have no real strong feelings, about torturing a stranger for information. I mean, it varies. Depends entirely on how fun any given stranger is to work with. You'll be a challenge, I think, and I want you to know, I appreciate that. I just mean to say, why! Torturing a perfect stranger, that's nothing! Have you tortured men before, Mister-- Ah! Still no name? Monsieur?"

"Not by talking them to death." The Spy blinks. It earns him another laugh, another smile that cannot do anything to alter the eyes fixed upon him. 

"And been tortured before."

"By the best." He smiles.

"Oh, not yet, I'm afraid." The man smiles back. "After you give me Ducat, though, you can make that boast to the next man you meet. Strangers, though? Always a stranger? Ah, no... No, of course not. An enemy, somewhere in your past. You know what it's like to put the screws to a man you hate, with a personal, fiery passion. I can see it in you. I mostly do strangers, myself. A friend, once."

Even that does not bring any feeling to his eyes, and the Spy can't believe he has friends, not real ones. 

"I'm going to play you a little something. I'm sorry I couldn't provide you with any visual entertainment, but I think your imagination will fill in the gaps." The man brings a dictaphone up from below the Spy's field of vision.

"Your friend?" The Spy asks, coolly dismissive.

"No. This man is not my friend."

He plays the tape back. There are cries, and grunts, and the sound of a fist hitting flesh, of a small bone snapping. There are no questions. There are ragged, pained breaths, sobs. Several times the man on the tape manages a strangled 'gah', sometimes a long one, before all sound is choked off. One agonized scream ending in a gurgle. A break in the recording and then more broken sobbing and another helpless 'gah', and harsh, shaking gulps of air. And as it plays, the Spy watches his captor's eyes. 

They come alive, then, only when the tape plays. He sees something he is almost comfortable calling a fury, and something predatory. He imagines turning the solo on the tape to a duet, imagines being struck, cut, wrenched at, until the space is filled with two men's screams and sobs. When the tape stops, the man's composure is perfect again, and he returns to the table with his trays of instruments, to set the dictaphone down.

"That... is the worst harm I've ever done a man without killing him, I think." He says. His voice is quiet, and the Spy feels the danger in the room grow larger to fill the space his voice leaves. "Of course, he was in no position to speak, after all of that. Even now, he is lying in a dark room somewhere, shaking and insensate. A room to which only I hold the key. When I'm ready to leave you alone, I'll go back there, and once he can talk, he will tell me everything I want to know. He won't hold back a single detail, not if I ask. I may, similarly, give you some time alone to reflect. Get what I can from him and come back to you."

The Spy can just imagine-- can imagine so hard he can almost feel the moment of resistance and the rattle of breath-- being free to sink his knife into that back. There is an insult in having it turned to him by a fellow spy, a man so confident as to feel safe doing so. Even tied down as he is, the Spy feels it rankle, that he is discounted so thoroughly as a threat now. 

The man on the tape had been a wreck, and the Spy does not know if he was a professional as well. A part of him hopes not, hopes he was an ordinary, breakable man, unfamiliar with the reality of torture. There is a soft part of him that hopes for the opposite, because there are still standards, still morals, even in the cesspool of their profession.

"You wonder who he is?" The man offers, with a cold, sly smile. "If he's had training, perhaps, or why I want him? Well... there are a lot of reasons. But he's the last man I've been able to find to see Ducat in person. If you are lucky, he will give me enough that I won't even need to keep you more than a day. And because I know you are wondering..."

"It is nothing to me who he is or why you wrecked him."

Fury blazes up in the man's eyes again, only briefly, and it is a comfort rather than a terror, with how unsettling the near-constant coldness is.

"I know. You are wondering." The man repeats crisply. "He is a consummate professional. Not precisely James Bond or anything, but then, we live in the real world, and nothing is so neat or so flashy."

"He can't be that consummate." The Spy shrugs. 

He is backhanded, hard, but when his head stops reeling, the man is wearing a pleasant smile, and the Spy can't be sure his tone had anything to do with it. 

"We'll see how you measure up." Says the man, leaning over the Spy again. "I don't normally like to give myself an unnecessary deadline, but maybe we should speed this on its way."

There is another strong backhand, sending him back the other way, and then a punch to the gut, driving downwards to allow for the fact that the Spy is lying on his back strapped to a table, and the mild-looking little man who is a good four inches shorter than the Spy, who does not seem at all muscular, has a punch that can knock the air out of the Spy's lungs.

"That's a start." He dusts his hands off, smooths them over his suit. "But I really should find what makes you tick. I really should." 

"I like... long walks on the beach." The Spy gasps. 

"See, I knew you'd be fun." The man cocks his head to the side, stares a moment. "Still not claustrophobic?"

"No, I love it. Cozy." 

"Mm. Shame. Well, after a few hours, you may change your mind, a lot of men do. You'd be surprised. I was in your shoes once, and the man torturing me had to run out of the cell we were in after only an hour. Said he couldn't breathe. I could see him through the open door, out in the hallway scratching at his arms and panting. Rocking. Begging for a little more air and tearing at his collar. It was nice. I do feel prisoners should be provided with a little entertainment. So what is it, for you? Knives? Needles?"

"I am used to both."

"Maybe it isn't the tool at all. Maybe it's you. Fingernails. Eyes. Teeth."

He knows he is being watched for a reaction. He gives the man a mild smile-- there is a vicious pleasure in that, after all the unnerving smiling he's sat through. 

"I am used to all of that as well. I've been disemboweled before. I've been set on fire. You go ahead and do your worst, but I have nothing for you, and I have stopped fearing death a long time ago."

"You must be a mass of scars beneath that mask and that suit."

And there is the one reaction he can't betray. He feels his face fall as his captor's grin widens. 

"I'll let you keep it for now. But I'll take it from you later." He promises. "If I don't get what I want."


	3. Unraveling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spy settles in for a long, slow game of getting hit where it hurts.

He is left alone for a little while, to marinate in the threat, while his captor excuses himself on 'other business' and exits up the narrow staircase. 

Alone is a breath of air, but it is not much of one, and his hands still refuse to cooperate with his attempts at freedom, clumsy and useless, the occasional pins and needles all that he has to even provide a physical reminder that they are still there. 

And his Sniper, in Australia, with no idea... It's best that way, of course, and he knows that it is, but he hates the thought he can't shake, that he will die like this and his lover will think he disappeared on some fickle whim, will be hurt by it.

He doubts there is a lie he can give that will buy him any relief. Anything he said would be verified before it would be accepted, and he has no illusions. No matter what his captor has told him, he doesn't believe he will go free at the end of it all. 

When the man returns, he has a canteen with him, and the Spy hates himself for drinking, and for leaning after it, chin wet, in a silent plea for more when it is taken. He doesn't feel as though there can possibly be enough. He had been ignoring as many of his own physical discomforts as he could, ignoring the dry burn at the back of his throat until the smell of cool, fresh water hit him and he caved, and now with the canteen pulled away again, he licks his lips to try to catch what's dribbled free, and there is still not enough. His thirst isn't slaked, the only change he can perceive is that now he is aware of it and he cannot ignore it again. He can't be sure how long he has gone without. He can't be sure how long he will go now. Years of growing used to the desert have not granted him freedom from thirsting, they have only taught him that if he thirsts, he cannot spare the moisture it would take, to spit in his enemy's face. 

"Go fuck yourself." He snarls, head falling back.

"You're welcome." The man smiles, loosening his tie and then his collar. "Oh, this is going to be fun, breaking you."

The Spy stiffens, tries to jerk away on instinct only to still again as the hem of his mask is seized. 

"This is a remarkable fabric!" He exclaims, as though he is looking over some advancement in the field of leisure suits and not holding the Spy's sanity in his grasp. "The way the surface is treated, it looks almost as if it's leather, but here, where I flip it to see the reverse... oh, it's almost like a swimsuit! And here-- hold still, now!"

The Spy does, though he can see no good coming either way, as a small knife comes out. The movement is smooth, the weapon emerging from perfect concealment, blade popping free of the handle with a sharp, precise flick, a little sound that the Spy's ear seems preternaturally tuned to, higher and quieter than the sound his own favorite blade would make. He closes his eyes, which feels like a weakness, and he can feel it near his throat. He knows it can't be death, not yet, but his body tenses for it just the same. 

"Perfect!" His captor crows, and the Spy hears the sickening sound of fabric slowly unraveling, feels the vibration travel up the thread and radiate through the material clinging to his throat. "Now... we'll just go a little bit at a time, until you feel cooperative. Are you a reader, Mister--? Mister Spy?"

"You want to discuss literature now?"

"No." There is a flicker of something, a darkness moving beneath the geniality of the man's features and the coldness of his eyes. "I am not here to 'discuss literature' with you. My employer is a literary-minded man, that's all. He tends to speak in flowery analogies and stories from old books. Just an idle curiosity, as to how well you two might have gotten along. He is that dangerous creature I mentioned once before, the vengeful lover. Ducat had his. And until I have Ducat, there is no expense I could possibly encounter, and no deed of any price, that he would not gladly pay for, if it means getting his revenge."

"I can't get you Ducat, I told you--"

There is a sharp tug to the thread, he feels it unravel and swallows hard, quieting.

"Cooperate." The man smiles. "Remember? I am glad this turned out to be a fabric, one I could get a thread from. One I can take apart. The coating on the right side had me worried, I'll admit, but once you know how, every fabric frays, doesn't it? And some just fall apart. Like men."

"This isn't a matter of breaking me. If I could, I would. I can't."

"Mm. I don't believe you, of course. Perhaps if you'd seen what Ducat had done. To the lover? Poor thing... poor, broken creature. And Nemo-- ah, so he calls himself, my employer, I told you he was literary-minded-- the way he screamed, seeing it. The way he wept. The way he has carried on just remembering the state we found the dear in. Fingers broken, dark bruises everywhere, so thin... So thin. So grateful, looking up at him like he could undo it all, like with his means he could make the whole week not so. And Ducat long gone... and the both of them such a mess it all fell to me to fix things."

He yanks hard at every sentence, every fragment of one, and his voice gathers a dangerous edge to its conversational tone. The Spy hears mockery, for the 'Nemo' who pays the man's salary, and fury for Ducat, a sneer for 'fixing things', but the slow unraveling of the Spy's last bit of protection distracts him from drawing conclusions, and the man's eyes are still cold. 

"So you see," The man continues, as if he was giving a brief, dull lecture, as if he was not reducing the Spy's life to threads. "If I were to find a man who knew Ducat, who'd been in contact with him, who had any personal loyalty-- any personal relationship-- I would be remiss in my duties if I did not inflict the same."

He keeps his hold on the thread as he crosses to a low table, and the Spy can feel his throat growing barer, tiny bit by tiny bit. 

The photograph the Spy is presented with is gruesome. He cannot tell much about the hand's owner, not the size or the shape that it once was or even the skin's original color. It is a shattered, swollen mass of bruising and odd, awful angles. 

"Imagine the way this will heal, even under the best of circumstances. This is someone who will never play the piano again. Never practice surgery." There is another dark, unidentifiable twitch somewhere beneath the skin, as if some small, crawling thing wants to break free. "Never pick a lock, maybe, never deftly twirl a balisong or slip complicated knotwork free. A lot of things a man would never do after sustaining damage like this all hidden away from care."

He gives the thread another pull, his face looming, his grin cold, and then he and the picture are gone, the Spy's throat is half bare, and when his captor returns to his side, one of his hands is being freed, only to be brought to rest on a butcher's block, a cart rolled right up to his side, his wrist pinned without compromise and a small hammer resting inches away.

"When I'm through with you," The man intones. "You won't be able to do a damn thing. And these hands won't feel so numb in a moment. And then I'll take your face. Now give me Ducat."

"I don't have him!" He screams, the sound ripping free of his throat, his arm weak against the grip holding it down. 

The man was right about one thing. His hand doesn't feel numb anymore. Not at all.


End file.
